These days, you can’t talk about e-commerce without considering mobile. According to IBM, over 50% of 2016 holiday web traffic and 35% of sales came through mobile. Yet individual retailer results vary. The mobile measurement company where I work has visibility into mobile sales for hundreds of retailers. Across that sample, mobile’s share of e-commerce sales ranges from 15% to 90%. So, why do some succeed while others don’t? Here are five best practices to adopt for your retail app:

1. Thanks to
Five Best Practices
to Boost the ROI
of Your Retail Mobile Sales Efforts
By Jim Nichols
VP-Marketing, Apsalar
for publishing this content first.

2. Have an app.
Retailers need both a strong mobile web buying experience and
an app to maximize sales. Apps have proven to be most popular
with loyalist customers, while medium and light buyers tend to
shop on mobile websites. But you need both types of customers to
maximize sales.
You need both an app and a mobile-optimized website to
maximize retail sales.
Shoppers are more likely to use apps that provide unique value.
Macy’s, for example, focuses on unique discounts to satisfy its
deal-seeking core users. By contrast, Neiman Marcus focuses on
highly personalized recommendations for their less price-sensitive
customers. Such brand-aligned app offerings help cement core
brand equities with loyalist shoppers.
Optimize mobile shopping
experiences.
Smart retailers constantly analyze and optimize mobile
experiences. Interestingly, it took a shock to the system to get
many retailers to take mobile seriously. Google delivered it
in 2015 when it announced that search rankings would begin
These days, you can’t talk about e-commerce without considering mobile. According to IBM,
over 50% of 2016 holiday web traffic and 35% of sales came through mobile. Yet individual retailer results vary.
The mobile measurement company where I work has visibility into mobile sales for hundreds of retailers. Across that sample,
mobile’s share of e-commerce sales ranges from 15% to 90%. So, why do some succeed while others don’t?
1
2
strongly favoring mobile-friendly websites and penalizing
mobile-unfriendly ones. Not surprisingly, “Mobilegeddon” set off
retailer panic; search engines contribute to about 40% of online
transactions, according to a SimilarWeb report referenced by
Business Insider.
A friend told me of his company’s efforts to create mobile-friendly
experiences in the 60-day grace period Google allotted. The
primary step they took was to move to a more “responsive”
website platform. A responsive site reads the dimensions of the
user’s screen and adjusts the layout of the page and its content
according to what would look good on that particular screen
size. The company had done some work on responsive content
already, but the project had stalled in favor of other priorities
until Google made its announcement. Additionally, they reduced
the “weight” of web pages by removing unnecessary scripts
and optimizing image sizes. The new site was complete by the
deadline and actually improved their rankings.
Mobilegeddon also drove a cultural shift that put mobile at the
center of everything they do. These days, virtually every major
retailer is investing heavily in making mobile shopping a better
experience.
Mobilegeddon also drove a cultural shift that put mobile at the
center of everything they do. These days, virtually every major
retailer is investing heavily in making mobile shopping a better
experience.
2Copyright © 2017 All rights reserved worldwide. | www.apsalar.com
Here are five strategies that help mobile winners drive great results:
Mobilegeddon also drove a cultural shift that put mobile
at the center of everything they do. These days, virtually
every major retailer is investing heavily in making mobile
shopping a better experience.

3. Analyze and
optimize buyer flows
Mobile use cases and touch screens create unique
checkout challenges that retailers must address to squeeze
every possible dollar from the channel. Mobile retail
winners, however, dig into user data to find buyer logjams
that increase checkout abandon rates. They begin by
analyzing purchase paths to see where buyers drop off.
Dig into user data to find buyer logjams that increase
checkout abandon rates.
Years ago, I worked with a retailer that had great PC
conversion rates, but terrible mobile conversion rates. Our
analysis revealed a huge hurdle: Users had to enter their
name, address and payment information every time they
shopped. When we updated the e-store to autofill forms,
conversions spiked.
Dedicate ongoing marketing
resources to mobile.
With mobile, brands have unique opportunities to reach
and persuade would-be buyers. They can connect with
people while on the go, use location-based messaging to
influence decisions near relevant venues, and market to
specific audience segments like first-time mobile shoppers,
lapsed mobile buyers and mobile loyalists.
3Copyright © 2017 All rights reserved worldwide. | www.apsalar.com
One popular strategy uses mobile to stimulate incremental purchases
from past buyers. Here, the merchant creates audience segments
based on the amount the individuals have spent in the past, and/or the
specific categories/brands/items they buy. Once the segment has been
created, the brand then creates creative executions specific to that
audience segment. Here are just a few examples of how this can work:
A segment of past Ralph Lauren purchasers are shown ads that say “Sneak Peek:
See the new Ralph Lauren Fall Collection.”
People who usually spend $200-$300 on shopping at a time get a discount offer if
they spend more on their next shopping trip: “Save $100 when you spend $400.”
People who have just purchased a new suit receive an offer for related,
complementary merchandise: “Get 30% off dress shoes today.”
Get personal with customers.
Successful mobile retailers create serendipity, using personalization
technology to deliver the right messages at the right times. Savvy
retailers now personalize everything from mobile pages to emails, push
notifications and ads.
Personalized ads show great results in our industry data. We’ve
seen ROI increases of 180% to 540% when brands leverage past
purchases and searches to personalize mobile ads and CRM. For
example, I routinely receive airfare alert banner ads featuring price
cut offers to specific destinations I often visit. When I see a great fare
available between San Francisco and Missoula, I make an incremental
purchase. When marketers use a shopper’s past purchases and
searches to personalize experiences and product recommendations,
sales usually go way up.
3
4
5
Savvy retailers now personalize everything from mobile pages
to emails, push notifications and ads.
Dig into user data to find buyer logjams
that increase checkout abandon rates.

4. Conclusion
Mobile provides unique opportunities to deliver more effective
marketing. By leveraging strategic focus and best practices, a
merchant can go a long way toward maximizing mobile sales.
About Apsalar
Apsalar Mobile Marketing Cloud helps app marketers solve their
biggest challenge: attracting and developing profitable, loyal users.
Rely on Apsalar to optimize installs, analyze the business, build
high-performing audiences, and distribute audiences to partners for
customized marketing efforts like engaging new users, winning back
uninstallers, and closing cart abandoners.
FOR MORE INFORMATION, VISIT
https://apsalar.com or email info@Apsalar.com.
In the US you can also call
877-590-1854
Copyright 2017, Apsalar, Inc. All rights
reserved. Apsalar and the Apsalar logo are
trademarks of Apsalar, Inc. All other brand
names and logos referenced herein are
property of their respective owners.